This is the first year in which Boulder Valley schools will not have a class Valedictorian. The address will instead be delivered by the student who gave the “best audition.” This is just so, well, Boulder for you. If they had eliminated Valedictory speeches because they often suck that would be a different story altogether but no they eliminated the entire role of Valedictorian and Salutatorian because they don’t want students competing for the role any longer.
Boulder officials didn’t seem to appreciate the fact those competing for top honors would often load their coursework down with more advanced classes. Those silly, silly kids! They instead would like to see students aim for a more “well balanced” course load, i.e. more classes such as gym, art and yearbook.
In the article one student had this to say:
“I like that they don’t have a valedictorian do the speech anymore because it gives us kids without straight A’s a chance to speak our minds,” Morell said. “I’m definitely not an (International Baccalaureate) diploma kid, but it’s nice to be able to speak about the past four years.”
That’s why you get yourself a blog! Sheez.
Of course a would-be valedictorian has this to say:
“I think it’s just another process to make everyone feel like winners, while in reality some people are just better than others,” Schein said. “I think that if someone wants to be valedictorian and sacrifice their electives to take weighted courses, why not let them be valedictorian?”
Let’s just hope he meant to say that some people are better students than others…
